Redemptive Suffering - Part II

I didn't have any real big plans for this lent. Simple tightening of Wednesday/Friday fasting rules, a commitment to cut out unnecessary spending and give more money to people in need that I encountered was about it. So I suppose it was God who decided to help me focus in on the idea of redemptive suffering. He did this by dropping a few deep meditations on this reality into my lap. 

One of them I mentioned already in a previous post, a short film that my friend Rob shared with me on the 21 Coptic Christian Martyrs of 2015. This short (13 min) film is a brilliant work of art and devotion. It is tastefully done, sparing us the graphic details of their beheading and instead focusing on the steadfast faith of these men devoted to Jesus and committed to forgiving their persecutors to the very end, echoing Jesus words: "Father forgive them for they know not what they do."

What prepared me for receiving this film was an assignment for my upcoming summer course, the fourth installment in my pursuit of a spiritual direction certificate from Divine Mercy University. In preparation for this class I was assigned to read Fr. Walter Ciscek's book "He Leadeth Me".

It just so happened that it was released on Audible on March 11 so I listened to it during my commutes and gym work outs over the past ten days. What a blessing this book has been to me!

Growing up I had been taught almost nothing about the reality of redemptive suffering. It wasn't a buzz phrase in the circles I traveled in my first five decades. Turns out that it is a very common phrase in Catholic circles, so I began hearing reference to it over and over once I entered the Orthodox and Catholic faith walk over twelve years ago.

Even Fr. Mike Schmitz has a quote on it!
(Fr. Mike's Bible in a Year and Catechism in a Year
Podcasts have gone viral - I'm half way through them)

But NOTHING has demonstrated this reality as well as this book by Fr. Ciszek has. I am so grateful that he took the time to share his experiences as a prisoner in the Russian Siberian work camps with the world. It has helped me finally get a grasp on linking two core Christian concepts:

1. Complete surrender to God's will moment by moment.
2. The fact that God's permissive will may allow us to suffer with Christ.

I have been slowly learning the first, but have been a bit clueless and reluctant to embrace the second. 

Fr. Ciszek's excellent recounting of his experiences and thought processes have impacted me so deeply. His writing evokes several words and phrases, allow me to list just a few that come to mind:

• Heartfelt
• Sincere
• Nuanced
• Loving
• Deep
• Insightful
• Tender
• Theological
• Philosophical
• Devotional
• Brutal honesty toward his own faults
• Compassion towards others and their foibles
• Humility
• Thorough
• Kind
• Non-combative
• Factual
• Patient explanation
• Refusing to demonize or horribalize others
• Seeking the good in others
• Sacrificial service of others
• Not trite or cliché
• Genuine

I can now say without a doubt that I know how to frame my own sufferings better, small as they may be compared to Fr. Walter's. 

Perhaps reading a synopsis of his experience here would help you want to take the deeper dive into his writings. 

His wiki page is here and is a bit more thorough.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is trying to put their own suffering and the suffering of humanity in general into a more hopeful perspective.

Many blessings, hope and light to you.

Father Forgive Them

It seems that this lent is destined to be focused on what it means to suffer. Can human suffering be redemptive? I'll be pondering that in the next post or two this lent.

The 21 Coptic Martyrs

My friend Rob shared the video below. It rounded out my understanding of the event of February 15, 2015 depicted in the icon above. The takeaway for me is this: not to hate those that persecute and kill us but rather to pray for them as Jesus did in his suffering:

"Father forgive them for they know not what they do."

Incredible Shrinking Man

This post is inspired by one of my very favorite songs from one of my very favorite bands. In it they assert that while we think we are becoming more powerful and in control, humanity is actually shrinking in all the ways that are actually important.

Daniel Amos: The Incredible Shrinking Man

Listening to this song again got me thinking about perhaps a less obvious way humanity is shrinking. I think that pertains to the realm of our spirituality and that this aspect is more detrimental to us than all the other ways we are shrinking.

You see, I believe the ancients had one thing right; they had a 3D view of the cosmos… there were the everyday flat relations with humans (2D universe) and then that went 3D when relating to the divine powers, be that Jehovah God or whatever gods men served.

I believe Jehovah God offers us a 4D universe since the time he injected himself into his own creation. This is not just a one and done type thing. He continues to offer himself as bread for the life of the world every day at these cosmic portals called “the Mass” or “The Divine Liturgy”.

There was a time when much of the world believed in this divine 4D interaction, but it passed.

In the 1500s, much of the world began to embrace the new religion of science and falsely assumed it precluded the 4th dimension.

Result: Incredible shrinking man from 4D down to 3D.

Then with the descent into atheism in the last few centuries, succored by the so called thinkers of the age, many have shrunken into a blind 2D universe.

Result: Incredible shrinking man from 3D down to 2D.

Now the narrative is limited to what person or group is oppressing what other person or group and the only thing that matters is a show of power to liberate the oppressed group.

This is incredibly small thinking. It is called a one story universe, or perhaps a completely flat 2D universe in which relationships ONLY flow horizontally.

I utterly reject such notions as it simply doesn’t square with my experience or the experience of the majority of humans down through the ages. There has always been a vertical element for the majority. The mob has always had one thing right at least, there is a divine Other and we are not that divine Other. A 3D universe.

But I would again insist that isn’t enough. It isn’t enough to acknowledge a divine other.

I believe the Divine Other took on the flesh of His own creatures. He entered into our pain. He let us kill Him. He used that as a convenient opportunity to trample down death by death, He started undoing death at that precise moment and death has been dying a little each day ever since. In fact, looking around, I’d say death is in its death throes, thrashing about and taking as many souls as it can, because it knows its time is short. This version of the world won’t be here long.

Death and evil is in its death throes

And having conquered death and sealed its eventual doom, the incarnate life giving God now offers Himself as food and drink… every day… all over the world. “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you… for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink”.

The 4th dimension, you see, is time. Kyros and Kronos. Just like the Greeks have four words for love (see the add video https://youtu.be/IpwXQ3FdBEo ) thus showing the silly weakness of our English language, they also had multiple words for Time. Kronos is the sequential marking of time that we think of most… calendars and clocks help us mark it now instead of the sun, moon, stars and planets but it is still the same concept… except we no longer have to look up. Hmmmm….

Kairos on the other hand is most often explained as “the opportune moment” or “living in the now” or “eternal moment”.

When God takes flesh, it is going to mess with time, am I right? I mean think about it. The divine taking on flesh is a huge thing. The hugest thing actually.

God is now both beyond time dwelling in the eternal now (kairos) and all at once in time, the daily sequence of events (Kronos).

Again, it smacks of the mysteries of quantum physics.

Anyway, I cannot bear living in a 2D universe. The narratives that erupt from such thinking are monstrous, in a flat comic book kind of way.

3D is a step in the right direction but still not enough. I cannot live with there just being a God and me not being God. That doesn’t satisfy the longings of my heart.

4D says, there is a God and he offers himself to me every day as food and drink. More than just a 3D relationship, this is intimacy. And I must have it.